The college (or prep school in Americanese) is mostly closed to visitors except for a not that interesting museum about the school and the chapel. Eton and Harrow have historically been the educators of England's young aristocrats, although at least when I lived there Eton had a much better academic reputation and Harrow was a school for the English equivalent of George Bush.

Had lunch at a local Indian restaurant. It's surprisingly hard to get Somchai into an Indian restaurant as he insists he doesn't like Indian food, but it's also hard getting him out, as he invariably loves it once we're there, and this was no exception. We then crossed the river to the bustling town of Eton, home of world famous Eton College. The town feels more substantial than Windsor, perhaps because it has to service hundreds of pampered boys rather than just one seriously pampered royal family. The main street is lined with antique shops for the tourists, and candy shops for the students.

Just some shots of the interior of the castle. The real highlight is St. George's Chapel, which has an amazing ceiling. I've been here a few times and have never quite made it to the display of Queen Mary's dollhouses, but at least I've got something to look forward to on my next visit.

The round building on top of the man-made hill is the beginning of the castle, and all the space that William the Conqueror needed to call home in the 11th century. Subsequent monarchs needed a bit more elbow room, so the castle grew in all directions and now resembles a walled city. Of course the castle is also afflicted with a changing of the guards ceremony, although this is much more low key than its Buckingham counterpart.

Back at Windsor, the queen's main residence gives the little town quite a dramatic skyline.

It's the largest inhabited palace in the world (although I think I read that about the Sultan of Brunei's digs as well) and the exterior defensive walls, draped along the hills and river banks, is a very impressive sight.

Unfortunately the town appeared to be one rain shower short of being flooded by the Thames River. The weather was fine the day we were there, but the next day was a disaster, so I'm not sure I'd be happy if I lived on the river. The river separates the towns of Windsor and Eton, and as I write this I'm realizing I should have done Windsor Castle first, then the river, and then Eton, but it's too late so we're sticking with this jumbled sequence.

On Saturday, we took the short train ride with the rest of the London tourists to Windsor. Nobody pays any attention to the town, which is very much in the shadows of the ginormous Windsor Castle, but it's a cute little place in a very Ye Olde England kind of way.

I'm not at all clear what happened Thursday and Friday. I know Somchai visited the Victoria and Albert Museum, another of my favorite museums, dedicated to decorative arts and full of fantastic antiques. He didn't like that, but he did like walking around Chelsea, another pretty London residential neighborhood. There was shopping on the King's Road and around Knightsbridge, he met some friends for lunch, but mostly he had massages, lots and lots of massages, by Kamil, a Polish masseur who worked for the hotel. Imagine my surprise at the stream of $300 spa charges that came pouring out of the printer at checkout time.

We also saw Les Miserables at the Palace Theatre on Friday night. It's the fifth time I've seen it and Somchai's first, but, uncool as it is, it's still my favorite play.

Again, no photos, so here's a couple of random photos of the Thames River.

I worked Wednesday through Friday so Somchai was on his own during the day. Wednesday, he started at St. Paul's Cathedral, probably the most beautiful building in London. He then went to the Royal Court and Inns of Court, which are the ancient training ground for England's lawyers, and a really beautiful part of the city that for some reason is overlooked by tourists. According to Somchai he then continued walking and walking until he got to Hyde Park. (I'm not doubting him, but walking from St. Paul's to Hyde Park would be quite an accomplishment, and he looks at me like I'm insane if I suggest walking ten minutes to a nearby store rather than driving.) We then had dinner at Vong's, accross from Hyde Park. Vong's is another London outpost of a New York restaurant, although this is much better than Nobu. It's dark and intimate, with a crazy and tiny bar area and great Asian fusion food imaginatively presented.

Unfortunately Somchai didn't have his camera with him that day so a)he has no proof of his supposed trek across the city, and b) I have no photos to share. I've got a couple of photos from later in the trip with St. Paul's in them, so I'll post them here and we can all pretend Somchai took them when he "visited".

On Tuesday we returned to Westiminster to see the Abbey, which was closed during our previous visit. It's a beautiful cathedral, as most European cathedrals are, but every inch of wall and floor space is also covered with memorials, tombs, and curiosities so it's a fun place to explore. Had lunch at Criterion, a gorgeous restaurant housed in the old Turkish baths, let down by mediocre service and food. Then spent the afternoon shopping in the rain around touristy Covent Garden and the nearby (and vastly better) Neals Yard, had a gutbusting high tea and then saw the Lion King at the Lyceum Theatre. It was a visually beautiful performance, although I'm one of the few people on earth who never saw the movie, and I knew none of the songs. As far as I can tell, there's virtually no plot, which when combined with unknown songs, made it a bit of a struggle.

After lunch we went to the nearby Tate Modern Gallery, which is a cavernous space occupying a giant brick power plant, obviously no longer in service. It was relatively new when we visited, and was thronged with visitors, mostly there to look at the huge empty spaces since the collection has (or at least had) relatively few blockbuster pieces. We then trucked over to the National Gallery, which I guess made about eight hours in museums that day. Presumably the Tate had siphoned off all the visitors to the National Gallery, so we had the place pretty much to ourselves, which was great because a) I really like this museum and b)crowds can be really aggravating during your eigth hour of museuming. We had dinner at Chez Nico, at the time one of three three Michelin star restaurants in London and I believe our first. Nico had a reputation for being a wild man who was always throwing famous people out of his restaurant for supposedly transgressing his ordering rules, but probably more for the publicity. Well, no such fireworks at our dinner, which was silent, just people whispering to one another at the well spaced out tables. Food was classic French, quite elegant. We ordered an eight course tasting menu, and I think lost Somchai around the fourth course. Since we didn't want to incur the wrath of Nico, I think that meant I ended up with twelve courses.

The next couple of days were pretty much a constant downpour, so we had to scramble the schedule a bit. Monday was an uninterrupted procession of museums, starting at the British Museum. We went a week before they opened the enormous new section in the museum's courtyard, which looked pretty cool. We spent a couple of hours there, mostly on the Asian collection and of course the very famous mummies. We then took a taxi to Oxo for lunch, which is a very good restaurant with great views from the South Bank over the city. Another reason we chose this restaurant is we have a friend in Bangkok who liked the restaurant so much, he stole the name and logo for use at his (now closed) Bangkok restaurant.

Some more photos of Mayfair, although the text, about dinner, isn't related, but we haven't stooped to such a tourist level that we take photos at dinner so there will always have to be this text-photo disconnect at dinner time. We had dinner at Nobu's, which I believe originated in New York but now seems to have sprouted in a dozen or so cities around the world. The London version is housed at the trendy Metropolitan Hotel, although this Nobu is much less trendy than the New York version. It looks more like a diner, a sprawling blandly designed place absolutely crammed with customers paying very high prices for pretty good Japanese food. It was packed even on a Sunday night, and the crowd looked like the crowd at McDonald's, big families, lots of kids all noisily enjoying dinner. Not complaining at all about that, but you rarely see a trip to the local sushi restaurant as a kids' favorite in the US.

We had lunch at Quaglino's in nearby Mayfair (pictured here). Mayfair is the most expensive part of London. When I lived there, mostly Arab sheiks lived there, but now it's mostly occupied by hedge funds. Similarly, when I was living here, Quaglino's, an enormous restaurant with a very dramatic staircase and famous for its raw bar, was the talk of the town. But today for lunch, there were only two tables occupied in the whole place. One minor consolation is the other table was occupied by Alan Rickman (barely recognizable in the US, but a bona fide celebrity spotting in the UK) and the food was still reliably good.

The Mall, the broad avenue leading to the Palace, is there chiefly to embarrass tourists, since nobody will ever pronounce it the "right" way (not to be the Ugly American, but this is one of three instances where the ignorant American pronunciation is infinitely preferable to the proper English one, clerk and lieutenant being the others). It's also lined with palaces, built by the nobility but now largely occupied by lesser royals.

There are a few parks surrounding Buckingham Palace that used to be part of the palace's grounds but are now open to the serfs. St. James' Park is the prettiest, and provides the best vantage point for photos as well. We didn't tour Buckingham Palace because it's only open during the summer, but I've done it previously. I would definitely recommend it but mainly because you'll feel like you missed something on your tourist checklist if you didn't. But it's not really that interesting. It's grand but not over the top enough to be memorable, and it's scrubbed of any sense of someone actually living there. There was a tv show about the real life at the palace, and people working there would talk about the queen eating cereal out of tupperware containers and stuff like that. Now that's a tour I'd like to take.

Because it was Sunday, we had the questionable pleasure of seeing the changing of the guards. It's nice because the main roads become pedestrian only, and the horse guards are interesting. The actual ceremony behind the gates of Buckingham Palace is a bit boring for me, but judging by the enormous crowds that come to see it, I'm very much in the minority.

The most famous landmark on Trafalgar Square is the National Gallery, which is a small-ish art gallery but a great collection and very nicely displayed. There's also the almost totally ignored National Portrait Gallery behind it. It's ignored because portraits tend to occupy the boring spectrum of painting, so the prospect of seeing thousands of portraits is understandably offputting, but it's a cute little museum and a great place to get up to speed on the who's who of britain before you tackle the historical sights these people used to occupy. The church photo is of St. Martin's, which is famous in the US because it's the prototype for the Congregational churches that occupy the prime real estate in every New England town.

One clarification-the weather in London is changeable, but not that changeable. We walked through this area almost every day so the various pics were taken on different days with different weather conditions, but I thought it would be easier to present if I grouped them geographically rather than sticking strictly to chronology.

Trafalgar Square is clearly ground zero for tourist London, and rightfully so. It's one of the few open plazas in the city, and the architecture is for once uniform. London has some beautiful architecture, but it's often sandwiched between 1960's office buildings and shops. The centerpiece is Nelson's column and the pigeon infested open plaza, but the surrounding buildings are stars as well.

Another reason not to write a lot about this trip is that London is the only overseas place we went as a family, and since my family is the big bulk of my fanbase, they're up to speed on all the history stuff. (Actually, I seem to recall Madame Tussaud's being a highlight of the family trip, so maybe the history is a bit rusty.) Well, here's the very unhistorical Millennium wheel, which is new(ish) so there's nothing much to write, except that I heard they're taking it down. That's fine by me, although I thought it was a pretty stylish ferris wheel. Obnoxiously large and clashing bigtime with the surroundings, but stylish nonetheless.

On Sunday, we walked around Westminster, the heart of tourist London and probably very familiar to anyone with a passport. You would think that would dissuade me from babbling on about these overly familiar landmarks, and you'd be right. For example, this is Parliament and Big Ben, which as you all know sits atop Parliament. There are many centuries of history on this site, which started out as part of the main royal palace but was rebuilt several times after fires, with this majestic faux-old building housing Parliament for the last couple of centuries. Lots of weird and wonderful things happen all over London's ancient sights, but talking about them at length would take the focus of us, which would be a shame. So you'll have to google up the history stuff, because the spotlight will stay relentlessly on Bromchai (like Brangelina, get it?). But since Sunday was also the only sunny day on the whole trip, there will be lots of photos about this area coming up.

Wow, I'm tired just reading my journal entry on our first day in London, but apparently this neverending day continued to a quick stop at Harrod's, which is a quick walk from the Albert memorials. I was never a big fan of the store's merchandise, or the look of the place on any of the floors other than the main floor. But the main floor is amazing, each room a different theme and all over the top. Of course the food halls are the most famous and well worth a visit. But if you haven't slept in a couple of days, and you're at the world's most crowded store a few days before Christmas, you don't stay for long. So we fled back to Notting Hill for an early dinner at the supposedly trendy Bali Sugar Club. We were early so the trendiness wasn't apparent, but the unfriendly staff hinted that it would be trendy later in the evening. Food was just average, and overall our most disappointing dining experience of the trip.

On the south edge of the park, Queen Victoria sponsored two memorials to her beloved husband Albert. There's an overly ornate memorial to him in the park proper, which you're supposed to think is grotesquely gaudy, but most people, including me, just think it's got lots of shiny bits and intricate carvings, what's not to like? Having said that, Victoria does seem to have overdone the grieving widow thing. Her whole purpose in life seems to have been to squelch sexuality and romance out of the nation, so it's quite a disconnect that when her unassuming husband died, she totally flipped, went into mourning for the rest of her life and never really recovered. Anyway, what energy she did have left in her was devoted to building Albert memorials. The more practical one was the Royal Albert Hall across the street, a huge oval concert hall still in use today.